Bruce Sterling is back this year. He has a remarkable ability to both celebrate dreams of the future - but also to challenge us with the problems he sees. That makes us more deeply consider what we are doing, why we are doing it - and the potential consequences of those decisions.
World traveler, science fiction author, journalist, and future-focused design critic Bruce Sterling spins the globe a few rounds as he wraps up the Interactive Conference with his peculiar view of the state of the world from a global perspective, as one who lives in Turin, Belgrade, and Austin. Most recently, Bruce has been an instigator of the DIY - Internet of Things model home project, Casa Jasmina. He also makes an annual "state of the world" assessment, with Jon Lebkowsky, for two weeks every January on The WELL.
Bruce Sterling closes the SXSW Interactive Festival with a wide-ranging, hour-long speech about the state of the nation (technological obsolescence of humanity, the robots-will-take-our-jobs,...)
The only way out of our Big Tech problem is up and through. If our future is not reliant upon high tech, it will be because civilization has fallen. Big Tech wired together a planetary, species-wide nervous system that, with the proper reforms and course corrections, is capable of seeing us through the existential challenge of our species and planet. Now it's up to us to seize the means of computation, putting that electronic nervous system under democratic, accountable control.